


As My Own Soul

by tonsilfoodcourt



Series: Assassins AU [2]
Category: Tiny Meat Gang (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Assassins & Hitmen, Bruises, Childhood Trauma, Closeted Character, Cody/Kelsey Friendship, Continued Beating-Up On Cody, Danger, Death Wish, Forbidden Love, Futile Domesticity, Gun Kink, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, Jealousy, Long-Distance Relationship, M/M, Mutual Pining, Noel Has Beautiful Elegant Hands And I Must SAY IT, Panic Attacks, Pining, References To Past One-Sided Cody/Devon, Religious Imagery & Symbolism, Sexual Violence, Showers Are For Crying, Slow Burn, Suicide Attempt
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-07-23
Updated: 2019-07-23
Packaged: 2020-07-12 07:02:23
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,744
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19942123
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tonsilfoodcourt/pseuds/tonsilfoodcourt
Summary: "Sometimes I feel like you actually think there’s something you’re missing out on here.”Maybe there is.(More assassins AU, ongoing/extended and moved to a separate work to let part 1 stand on its own. Read the first part or this one won't make sense!)





	1. Cody

Cody (or whatever he’s called this year) jabs haphazard stitches through a gash on his good arm, bright spot of _feeling something_ in the middle of a gray-washed hotel room on a gray-washed night where the only other thing he can see in full color is zipping up his jacket to go. There’s a bruise, watercolor blue, on the heel of Devon’s hand - the shape of a man’s nose driven back into his skull, someone's last mark left on this gray earth.

He's smiling, because there's no such thing as a _grim_ reaper. You do this shit enough and you laugh, every time.

“Don’t you dare fuckin die while I’m gone, dude,” Devon shoots him finger guns like he’s not serious, like he doesn’t turn out Cody’s pockets looking for pills after every job.

(Like Cody would try _that_ again, like even aspirin doesn’t turn to gravel in his throat after that last fistful of stolen percocets - his body revolting against his own mind, the cold bathroom tile, the taste of Devon’s fingers forcing it all back out of him. The rawness in his voice after: _Let’s just leave this out of the report, it was a mistake.)_

The door shuts and then everything’s dull again but the bright slash he’s mending, everything will keep being dull until Devon leans over his pillow a few hours later, cups his neck for a pulse and huffs out a warm, easy laugh against Cody’s cheek. He smells like lip gloss and light beer, like a no-name hookup in the bathroom of a dive bar. “I know you’re awake, you know.”

“I am _now,_ asshole.”

 _(It should’ve been you, you know, you’re the one who can't cope_ is the last thing Devon ever says to him.

Cody knots that up small as it can go in the darkest corner of his heart, and tries not to wonder if it's true.)

\--

He opens the curtains with a snap, raises the window and breathes fresh air in deep for resolve. He can't see Noel in position across the way but his presence is there, dependable as Cody's own heartbeat.

 _(Must be nice, having a partner who can keep to a_ fucking _schedule._ Must be nice, not having to do more than sit back and aim. These scumbag targets can’t be clocked to the second like Noel’s fingers slipping well-oiled parts into place, steadying the barrel as he sights down the scope to Room 1648, Executive Suite.)

Mr. Captain of Industry, Mr. two kids and a wife and a tendency to herd eager new grads up to his room to be mentored, _clothing optional,_ clears his throat behind Cody. Rattles ice in a cocktail glass, trying to dissolve whatever he's spiked the drink with - or just being garden-variety impatient, baiting Cody’s attention back from the skyline. 

He feels it in the back of his throat, could choke on this much loathing.

Cody needs to brush his teeth, get the stale taste of whiskey and all the cigars he didn't fucking smoke off his tongue. He imagines spitting on this man's corpse and then bites down on a smile and turns, all friendly nerves and anticipation. “I've never been up to the top floor before. _What_ a view.”

“I prefer the view _inside_ right now,” drink pressed into Cody's hand, loose strands of Cody's hair brushed back into place. He probably thinks he's being suave. Probably thought pawing gracelessly at Cody’s slacks in the elevator was fucking _foreplay._

Noel's voice in his earpiece: _I've got you._

So Cody channels his irritation (his _rage)_ toward something more useful, smiles and blinks up through his eyelashes like he's never heard a goddamn compliment before. Says “I know _just_ what would make it better,” on cue, and drops down onto his knees.

Bang. Noel’s got him. If you can't have what you want, the next best thing is burning what somebody _else_ wants right to the ground. That's just God’s honest truth, _baby._

His gloves are out of his pocket by the time the body hits the floor, gunshot barely a whisper in the distance. He lets himself have one _“Fuck_ you” as he stands, middle finger flicked toward eyes that won’t see it, and then he gets to work editing himself out of the scene: wipes his fingerprints off the glass he's holding. Goes back over everything he’s touched like he’s his own shadow, following himself around on a several minute delay.

He leaves drawing the shades again for last. Noel will roll his eyes at the kiss Cody blows toward where he imagines Noel still sits, watching.

Cody pockets the contents of the jewelry safe as a last touch and then unbuttons his shirt, rebuttons it askew and rumpled at the collar. Dabs whiskey from the glass under his jaw like cologne, _eau de regret,_ and walks back out into the hall like so many social climbers before him, just a little dazed.

There's really no disguise like the walk of shame. If he avoids the doorman’s gaze it’s only mutual, discreet. _I'm good, just waiting for my Lyft._

Noel pulls up on cue, modest four door hybrid with all the right decals in the window, another kind of invisibility this time of night. Cody climbs in the back and doesn't make himself speak until they're safely out of bounds.

“I hope I can just gut the next guy, dude, because I fucking _hated_ that shit.”

Noel doesn't ask him to explain, but Cody knows he's being watched in the rearview mirror. He knows how it feels to be sized up. “I'm _fine."_

\--

The restaurant Devon chose smells like Windex, but when Cody lays his hands on the table they come away sticky. When the waitress returns he orders guacamole and another beer, needing to fill the silence; she looks at him a second too long before she goes, and he’s caught wondering if he’s done something weird, like check the exits or size up the bus boy too obviously - but Devon hasn’t looked up from his menu in minutes, so Cody must be fine.

Or maybe it’s something more subtle. His knuckles are bruised.

(They had rinsed off in a gas station bathroom before coming here. Cody had held each of Devon’s wet hands in both of his, checked his fingernails for blood one by one.)

The internet has a lot of good information on what’s expected, if you know how to find it. Cody thumbs through social media posts tagged at their location but sees no surprises, just normal people smiling bright and careless at their camera lenses, normal plates of food with the color saturation cranked up. The aesthetic - comfort, sameness, a little bit of kitsch - is as hypnotic as it is utterly alien.

“I thought you deleted that app.” Cody lets his phone be pulled from his fingers, watches Devon squint down at the gallery, perfect 3-across grid of cropped and filtered snapshots. “How _fucking_ boring.”

He lays the phone flat on the table between them, swipes past images like he’s looking for something specific: 2 margaritas, a plate of soggy-looking-and-violently-colorized nachos, a man and a woman holding hands. A woman squeezing a lime wedge into a pint glass. Two teens, grinning like they don't know there's salsa caught in their braces. “Boring, boring, fucking stupid, boring…”

Cody counts the beats until he can take his phone back without seeming bothered. “I get it dude, you're hilarious - “

“Really, do you? Get it?” Devon looks directly at him, suddenly as skeptical as any psy ops interviewer. “Because sometimes I feel like you actually think there’s something you’re missing out on here.”

Cody laughs, once he’s sure he can do it without any hesitation, and then picks up the pint glass the waitress sets down. “If there was, would either of us even know it?”

\--

Noel leans patient in the doorway while Cody rinses with mouthwash once, twice, spits wintergreen-fresh down the drain and tries not to feel hateful about this obvious effort to take care of him. “I know we usually don’t, but we _could_ talk about it.”

Cody shuts the tap off too hard, feels the plastic fixture protest as he turns away from the sink. Every cheap hotel room in every square mile of North America sounds the same - loud pipes draining, dusty air conditioner humming white noise. He knows this room like he's lived his entire lifetime in it, could just as easily slit a man’s throat as sleep here. “I don’t know the words to that script. What do you want to hear, an _I love you?”_

“Nice. Heartfelt.” There’s no venom in it though, and Noel shifts on his feet but doesn’t back away from Cody’s approach. His expression softens in a way that Cody doesn't know if he wants to read.

“It _is_ heartfelt, motherfucker,” Noel always smells clean: spearmint gum, rental car air freshener, hair gel. Cody needs to shower off his own _scotch-designer cologne-blood spatter_ blend but if he slows down right now he’ll shatter, so he doesn’t. “If only I _had_ a heart.” The worn yellow cotton of Noel’s t-shirt, one of the few he likes, tears easily in Cody’s hands and _finally_ Noel is provoked into action. 

He catches Cody's wrists, grip hard, but gives Cody what he needs in merciful silence, no more labels or declarations. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> @platinumbered made a set of mood boards for this chapter and it's just...the whole aesthetic. [_Thank you._](https://platinumbered.tumblr.com/post/185420292129/nice-heartfelt-it-is-heartfelt)


	2. Noel

“How would you qualify your partner’s mental state?”

(They’d parked on floor P3 of the last hotel’s garage, color-coded green with little turtles swimming through a mural across from the elevator bay to make it memorable. Provoked by nothing Noel could discern, Cody had punched that wall once, twice, split his knuckles and left a red stain slowly browning on the concrete, polluting the painted water. 

Noel had brought a bucket of ice upstairs for him where it melted on the nightstand, ignored as Cody cradled his fist and paced the length of their hotel room. He'd gone back and forth like a caged lion for the better part of an hour.)

Noel ponders safe answers, but not for so long it’s suspicious. “Uh, good I guess, same as always - he’s a little intense, you know, but who around here isn’t?”

It’s a rhetorical question, left unanswered as his handler jots perfunctory notes and moves on to the next bullet of the debrief questionnaire. Noel feels wound tight himself, a rubber band ready to snap, but - another rhetorical question - who would carry the ice bucket if he did? 

\--

As a child, Noel’s younger sister had dragged her feet to church every Sunday morning, dreading the lost hour of freedom with its alternated forced stillnesses and forced recitations. Not Noel, though - for him there was something so reassuring about the way holiness came with it’s own precise recipe. Stand, sit, kneel, sit, stand.  _ And also with you. _ And all those long and mysterious words, each a kind of poem within itself and the way the letters they contained could be rearranged into almost anything on demand.  _ Salvation: vats, lost, tin. Redemption: need, pit, dote, noted. Consecration. Crucifixion. Multitudes. Communion.  _

Later on, he’d discovered more viscerally satisfying rites and new vocabulary with the same alluring musicality but as it turned out, none of the promise -  _ Initiation. Ammunition.  _

And at last, a two-parter,  _ Juvenile Detention: novel, dive, tile, vote, dove.  _

When the scout came to him with her pressed pantsuit and her calculating glance through his file and finally her offer  _ (Commutation: atom, coat, taint) _ it had felt like Grace. The means to wash away his sins - if not for himself then for his sister, who might actually do something worthwhile with his family’s limited resources. So he’d put the first name he’d ever been given down on the dotted line and left it behind with his grandma’s rosary beads and the jumpsuit and all the rest of his earthly belongings. Born again, glory be. 

Cody says  _ he _ made his choices more freely, but Noel knows by now that not all handcuffs are titanium. 

He’d come through the other main pipeline, high school athletics - had chosen between an Ivy League scholarship with a shot at the Olympics and filing his canines sharp enough to take a bloody bite out of the world. The way Cody tells it, he’d thought about it and realized he already knew everyone he’d meet at Duke. Realized he already hated the whole of them, himself most of all. 

Like Noel, he’d had that rare quality the recruiters were panning for, more valuable than gold flake to the right buyer: a self-nullification urge, that deep-seated need to burn all the shameful, unworthy parts of himself on the pyre with his birth identity documents, to see it all crumbled to ash. 

And of course, he’d also had a certain useful moral flexibility. Raw clay for the artisan sculptors at HQ. 

“They asked, so I told them who I’d thought about killing. In detail, who and how and even what I’d do with the bodies after. The whole list.” Several teammates, an assistant coach, a board member at the country club. Their families, too, for good measure - vengeance exacted down the whole bloodline, very Old Testament. 

Cody says it like he’s baring something ugly, daring Noel to look away. (As though Noel hasn’t grown to love his every strange and beautiful scar.)  _ See, I was always like this. Nobody made me do anything. _

The psychiatrists must’ve loved that. “Must’ve nutted on the spot, you mean? Yeah. Dollar signs, ka-ching. How soon can you sign, the whole bit.” 

Cody thinks he’s uniquely suited, a jagged blade cut for this and nothing else. Noel doesn’t press the point just then. Doubt is heresy, yet. 

\--

Nobody retires, anyway; it's a lifetime post. The clergy and them, baby. 

“We could if we died, though,” Noel ponders it as he says it one particularly gray afternoon, settles back on the sofa in his little-used apartment and uncrosses his arms deliberately the way the body language coach said would convey openness, lack of ulterior motive. 

Cody isn’t slow, he gets the fucking implication: blazing fire, no identifiable remains. A car crash. A job gone wrong, a stupid mistake and no traces left behind. 

He shakes his head, turning from where he’s been watching traffic through the Venetian blinds. He’s out of his element at Noel’s place, often on edge.  _ “We _ couldn't. Not both of us.” Not without a witness to make the story stick.

“So we just leave, then. Fuck the cover story and go to ground somewhere.” They could do it with a plan, a good one.

That gets a reaction, at least, like the provocation it is. 

_ “Here’s _ a plan,” Cody says easily, crosses and reaches under the coffee table for the handgun he knows he’ll find there. Hefts it, admiring in a way Noel knows is as sarcastic as Cody’s habit of silently saluting him whenever they pass each other in the halls at HQ. Noel takes in a breath to respond, tell him to be careful with other people’s deadliest belongings - but Cody drops himself into Noel’s lap then, straddling his legs as he thumbs off the safety. 

“You know, it’s a one-way ticket out but it  _ is _ a ticket,” Cody taps the muzzle against his temple, mock thoughtful, before bringing the gun up under his own chin. “What do you say? Me and then you? You and then me?”

Noel resists the urge to wrestle Cody for the gun, makes himself sit still and meet Cody’s eyes steadily. It’s worth the effort to trust him, even in his contrary moods. Especially in his contrary moods. “How about we both try to live, dumbass?”   
  
“Mmm, no,” Cody’s mouth grazes the length of the barrel as he brings the piece up with a self-conscious porn star eroticism, parody he shouldn’t carry off as well as he does. He wets his lower lip deliberately, pouts as he cups the back of Noel’s neck with one hand and centers his aim on Noel’s forehead with the other. “You know I don’t know how to do  _ that.” _

His hand doesn’t shake. Noel’s do though, gripping Cody’s waist. He digs his fingertips in to still them, knows he’s found an old bruise when Cody sucks a sharp breath in.  _ Good. _ He’s getting hard, despite himself - maybe just because he can feel that Cody is, too, when he shifts the angle of his hips. 

Anything that gets the heart rate up will do for foreplay, if one of them is looking for an excuse. 

“If you don’t know how to live, you know I don’t either,” Noel insists, leans into gunmetal like it’s nothing but one more surrender in a string of them. “But I bet we could figure it out if we wanted. It can’t be any harder than breaking into an embassy.” He sounds less certain than he’d like. His breathing’s too rough. 

_ “Any harder than breaking into an embassy,” _ Cody mocks, voice light like the brush of cold steel down the length of Noel’s nose. It’s impressive control, as heavy as Noel knows the piece to be with a full clip. “I  _ like _ your face,” Cody says abruptly, sweetly, leaning to kiss one corner of Noel’s mouth like he doesn’t have a gun pressed to the other side. “It’s a good one.” 

“How about you don’t go rearranging it, then?” Noel smiles, broad and falsely cheerful enough to feel the muzzle click against his teeth. It’s the right answer. So is opening his mouth wide enough for Cody to slip his substitute dick in where he really wants it. Tasting gun oil, firing range smoke, iron filings. It hurts to swallow around but he does, a laugh or maybe a choked-off groan caught in his throat. 

Nothing but one more surrender in a string of them. 

He assumes the conversation’s over then, guides his hands under Cody’s t-shirt and rucks it up under his arms to feel the tension in Cody’s back when he moves. Cody twists the gun in place, slow and intent, slides it back in-out over Noel’s tongue and drags a thick string of saliva and the rest of Noel’s capacity for debate out with it when he’s done. Flips the safety back on, finally, sets it aside on the couch cushion and then bends down to kiss him. It’s a little metallic, almost bloody, but they’re both used to that. 

Cody sits back to get their zippers down, all efficiency now, muscle moving in his jaw when he clenches his teeth. Thinking about something, less present than he’s pretending to be. 

“Make your little plan, then,” he says finally, like the afterthought it isn’t. Like it’s just a distraction from the pressing business of getting them both off. “And we’ll see if it’s any better than mine.” 

Noel files that instruction away for later. It’ll keep. 

\--

HQ avoids routine as a dogma, so there’s no predictability to their contact. 

Sometimes there are jobs back-to-back-to-back, whole months crammed together in cars and hotel rooms. That means idle hours of prep work and stakeouts, Cody pumping gas while Noel evaluates slurpee options inside, anticipating the puzzled delight on Cody’s face when he’s presented with a cup the size of a child’s wading pool.  _ What, you said you were thirsty. _ It means days waiting around for the green light from Ops, bickering over takeout menus. 

(It means Cody dropping their bags on the far bed in a new hotel room and then turning around grandly to ask “So we fucking, or what?”)

Sometimes there are no assignments for weeks and Noel slips in the roof access at Cody’s complex, jimmies the lock on the front door. Sometimes Cody is home and other times the air is stale, luggage missing when Noel checks the closet. Either way he climbs between soft sheets that probably aren’t washed as often as they should be but put still him to sleep immediately like a sedative.

Sometimes Cody turns up at Noel’s place, too, but Noel never asks him what he does if he finds it deserted. 

\--

Noel waits for Cody to ask about his great big getaway plans, heavy on the skepticism, for the chance to fight about it again, hash the details out and make a decision. And then he waits some more. 

Sometimes it’s on the tip of his tongue, so loud in his head he’s sure Cody must hear him thinking about train schedules and forged documents, but he’s not dumb enough to bring the topic up again - if it’s going to happen, it has to be Cody’s idea.

\--

He isn’t jealous when he sees Cody through the open door of the medical suite one morning, perched on the edge of an exam table talking animatedly to a girl with cornflower blue eyes and sun freckles. She’s wrapping his wrist with a care that’s striking, is all, and they look good together - wholesome like a cereal ad, if you ignore the blunt force trauma. 

He’s not jealous, but Noel hurries past before he’s compelled to decide whether that’s open trust on Cody’s face or just familiarity. 

(“Oh, you mean  _ Kelsey,” _ Cody’s voice crackles brightly in Noel’s earpiece when he asks, finally, and then he’s forced to reconcile equal parts relief and regret when Cody launches immediately into the story of a time he’d belched disgustingly in the smallest enclosed examination room, only to have the foul air sucked up and blown right back into his face.)

\--

Cody tosses something Noel’s way as he slips into the car and on instinct he catches it: an object cool and light like a bullet casing. He turns it over - a woman’s solitaire ring, old money name engraved along the inside curve. “Did you take this off the body?”

“Bedside table, I’m not an  _ animal,” _ Cody settles into the passenger seat, stretches like a cat after a particularly satisfying hunt. Noel’s left holding the corpse of the latest dead songbird. “Seemed like it might fit, you’re delicate.” 

It’s impractical, just another not-quite-joke about bloody Valentines. Or a rebuke, maybe, for his question about that female medic. 

It fits. “You know I can’t keep this.” It looks ridiculous, glittering as he flips on the turn signal to merge onto the highway. Noel doesn’t take it off. 

“Who’s going to tell anyone if you do?” He can feel Cody’s eyes on him, appraising. When he looks over, though, all he gets is a smirk. 

\--

Whenever Cody says  _ don’t forget I would die for you _ before they split up, what he really means is  _ I love you. _

Noel knows the right answer is  _ me too, _ but he can only ever find it in himself to say  _ don’t. _

\--

Noel is out of bed as soon as he hears the blinds of his living room window rattle, someone climbing inside unannounced. He’s silent, pulls a loaded piece from its hiding place and steps out into the hallway with it cocked, just in case. 

He knows in his heart who it is, after weeks of radio silence, but he’ll be damned if he’s caught unawares - death is always a less-present danger than endless mockery. (Noel isn’t sure which punishment is worse, either.)

There’s a familiar pair of boots kicked off on the carpet in the hall, the sound of water running. Noel lets himself drop his stance, but he doesn’t relax - when Cody visits he usually comes to bed straight away, has to be bullied into cleaning up. 

The bathroom door is ajar, opens easily at light pressure from Noel’s bare foot. 

Cody’s fully clothed in the shower, yanking off heavy soaked-through layers one by one. The water runs off him tinted pink but Noel hardly notices; it’s not Cody’s blood. 

There are livid marks sucked across one shoulder, bitten distinct down the back of his neck, and Noel doesn’t have to ask to guess the outline of that story - Ops prizes Cody for his ability to improvise and tends to throw him at unpredictable targets, the poorly researched rush jobs. 

He adapts. There’s always  _ some _ way to get a victim alone with their guard down. 

Noel sets his gun on the counter and strips out of his sweats, gets in behind Cody and crouches to help him peel wet denim down his legs. The water is ice cold, immediately shoots pinpricks of pain up Noel’s fingers, but Cody hasn’t even started trembling yet. Shock, maybe. “What do you need me to do?” 

Cody doesn’t answer immediately, spits down the drain and turns his face upward into the shower spray for a few beats. Noel waits, uncrumples a wet sock and lays it with its mate on the edge of the tub. Cody’s always been oddly vain about how long he can hold his breath underwater. 

Cody drops his forehead to the tile wall behind the faucet and strikes it once with the meat of his fist. He retches suddenly, coughs up bile and sways where he stands before Noel gets there to hold him up, reaches past him for the hot water tap when Cody’s teeth finally start to chatter. 

_ “Can we just go?”  _

Noel doesn’t understand at first - Cody’s voice is indistinct with cold tremors, soft in a way that’s unlike him. “What?”

_“Noel._ Don’t play dumb,” Cody whirls to face him finally, eyes wide with unfocused fury and impatience but also desperation, unshed tears. It makes Noel’s chest ache more than the cascade of freezing water. “You said you’d come up with a plan, right, so let’s follow the goddamn plan. Let’s get the fuck out of here. Let’s go, Noel, _please.”_

“Okay,” Noel says, because it seems like Cody can’t stop talking now that he’s started, and the water’s finally warmed enough for his lungs to work properly again.  _ “Okay.” _ That seems to calm Cody down minutely, drop his shoulders and unclench his fists a little more, so Noel keeps saying it. “Okay.” 

He pushes Cody’s bangs back off his forehead and cups his cheek, following when Cody flinches away as though slapped (registering the split lip, already closing over, and wondering fleetingly if Cody  _ was _ slapped). Keeps speaking gently, trying to ease him back into a shape that’s more recognizably himself. “Okay, Cody. Okay.” 

“Okay I - yeah.” Cody shuts his eyes and leans into Noel’s palm on his face, and if tears fall they’re indistinguishable in the water already running down his chin. 

Okay. 

\--

Cody doesn’t mention it in the morning. 

Noel wakes alone in his bed (amazing that he used to prefer it this way). The rumpled sheets beside him are cool, but when he sits up he smells what woke him: there’s coffee brewing. 

He pads down the hall to the kitchen, noticing that Cody’s shoes have been lined up neatly by the front door, that the wet mound of clothing they’d left in the bathroom sink is gone. He thinks about how to say  _ Are you okay? _ and ends up stalled in the doorway for several long seconds. “Do you ever sleep, or do you just wait until I nod off so you can touch all my stuff?” 

Cody’s got all the drawers emptied onto the counter and is sharpening Noel’s cooking knives, thoughtful as ever. “Lazy piece of shit. The sun was up 20 minutes ago.” 

Noel fixes his coffee. Takes a seat at the table so his knee bumps Cody’s and watches Cody work out his domestic impulses, as they were, on his cutlery. It’s territory marking, Noel finally decides. Cody can’t leave a toothbrush by the sink, so he does this kind of shit instead. 

Maybe this is what he does here when he finds Noel gone on solo assignment, his apartment empty. Noel tries not to wonder what Cody would’ve done if he hadn’t been home last night. 

There’s no sign of that trouble this morning, not counting Cody’s scabbed lower lip or the bruises visible when he bends forward to inspect his work, face almost level with the tabletop.  _ So who’d you kill?  _ Noel imagines asking, and knows Cody would answer in some fashion, but he doesn’t. He’ll probably hear all about it at HQ when he goes in later to use the gym, anyway. 

“Hey,” he says instead. “When you go in for debrief today, see if you can get your girlfriend in medical talking about the tracking chips.” 

The fact that Cody only nods, head down, doesn’t feel like the victory it is. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I thought this chapter was gonna be the conclusion, but it turns out it took way more words to get Cody to where we needed him than I thought it would. So I'll be back in part 4 to beat up on Noel for a change and wrap this motherfucker up. :)
> 
> s/o to [@sugargaze](https://archiveofourown.org/users/sugargaze/pseuds/sugargaze), whose tireless work to support chaotic top Cody rights and eroticized danger is an inspiration to us all.

**Author's Note:**

> Title is taken from David and Jonathan, another pair of mythical soulmates. 
> 
> My TMG tumblr is [@tastes-like-piss](https://tastes-like-piss.tumblr.com/) (and [fic tag: assassins au](https://tastes-like-piss.tumblr.com/tagged/fic-tag%3A-assassins-au) is where I dump everything related to this)!
> 
> (Obligatory disclaimer: Cody and Noel are real people with their own agency/lives/relationships/etc and these are just characters styled to look like them! I'm not making ANY statements about those two actual humans, I'm just out here trying to flex my creative writing muscle with character types/dynamics pulled from a pair of content creators I really really like. They would probably hate this, so please nobody send it to them. Thanks!!)


End file.
